Don't Drop the Soap

Yesterday, Kwame "Killa" Kilpatrick, Detroit's "Hip-Hop Mayor," went up for 18 months to 5 years in the pokey. 

Number 702408, but his new friends call him "Ass Princess"

I got the questionable privilege of being able to sit out the very end of Kwame's mayoral "service," but all that really means is that I had to do more homework than your average Detroiter to get really pissed off at what transpired while I was away from the city.  Then again, there are a lot of Detroiters who are not quite pissed off enough about those misdeeds, so let me just go off and explain, for anyone still staying at Kamp Kwame, just why this man needs to go to real, federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison. 

First, the charge:  Perjury.  In short, it means bald-faced lying to a judge not ten seconds after you promised to tell the truth to the judge.  It is important to remember that this is the principle crime for which Kilpatrick has been charged because frankly, I'm tired of people saying shit like "So what if he just wanted to get some booty? Why is that a crime?" 

Let's all get this shit out of our heads:  Kwame is not going to jail for porking Christine Beatty.  Kwame is not even going to jail based on some sort of rigid application of an adultery blue law because he cheated on his wife in order to pork Christine Beatty - Kwame is going to jail for porking Christine Beatty and then lying about it to a judge, going to jail for the lie, getting out on probation, and then lying some more to the court and to his P.O.

OMG U R So Hot - CUM over NOW!!! <3

But I can still hear a chorus of people saying "So what?  Who's going to tell the truth about keeping it on the down low / nobody has to know?"  and I just have to think that this is the engineered response of Kwame's defense team because it is like six degrees of separation removed from the actual crimes Kwame committed while in office. 

Kwame Kilpatrick squandered a shitload of Detroit's money - money Detroit did not have - and since Kwame's lawyers seem kind of savvy and smart (despite their recent defeat) the city will not get that money back.  Kwame is going to slime, squirm, lie, and cheat his way out of paying his $1 million dollar restitution bill - believe it.  

So in lieu of cash, Detroit will have to take flesh.  While Detroit won't receive proper remuneration, just maybe the city can break and destroy the man who symbolizes so much of its recent decay.

 That suit cost more than a Detroit child's education

While in office, Kwame did a lot of shit one kind of expects of a politician - splurging with some taxpayer money, making some kind of shady deals - Chicagoland type stuff.  While we expect a politician to dip his fingers in the honey, we don't expect him to take the whole pot, and while we look the other way when business and politics give each other hay-jays under the table, we expect that coitus to result in a money shot of jobs and tax revenue.

Kwame didn't run Detroit - he mugged Detroit.  He grabbed what he could, and expected that the city wouldn't waste time and resources investigating or avenging the crime.  He still evidently expects this to be the case as, like I've said, Detroit is not going to get its restitution money (since ordered to pay back that 1 million dollars, Kwame has moved to Texas, bought new cars, new clothes, and plastic surgery for his wife).

But Kwame evidently wasn't counting on the vindictiveness of the little people he trod over, and it bit him in the ass.  Idiosyncratically, the whole process has cost the city still more money that it will not recoup. Meanwhile, Kwame can take notes for his memoirs and maybe start up another website  to trick the undiscerning into believing he is some sort of victim (Warning - do not click link if you are just about to eat).

 

A lesson in metonymy: Kwame does not "look like" a pimp

Maybe, should he write those memoirs, he'll actually give us a proper account of what he did with all that money he funneled into under-performing or non-existent family-and-friend businesses.  Maybe, in those memoirs, we'll get an actual sincere apology as opposed to that "I'm a new man" bullshit that he fucking dared to try to speak at his sentencing.

I don't think so, of course.  I mean, here's a man who was only being investigated in the first place because of a laundry list of questionable, seedy, and downright nefarious deeds, some of the worst of which have been glossed over and ignored.  Stripper party at the Manoogian mansion?  Not particularly becoming behavior, but that sort of thing just makes the suburbanites shake their heads and say you have no class.  Killing a stripper because your wife caught her dropping down to get her eagle on in front of you, got pissed, and attacked the stripper with a baseball bat?  That's some Sin City shit right there.

Kwame is not a tell-all kind of guy.  If he were a tell-all kind of guy, he wouldn't  be having this trouble, now would he?

Just 'cause she dances go-go / that don't make her a hoe, no

It's just so American, the whole Kwame thing.  There are parallels to be drawn - a city that boomed and busted, a mayor who spent more on Escalades than Education, a big showy sports spectacle in place of anything resembling real urban renewal...and then there is the angle of racial disparity and prejudice:  Would Kwame have these problems had he been white?  Would he even have been elected? 

Tthese topics are for another time.

For now - our "hip-hop mayor" gets to round out his thuggified gangstah image by serving time in Jackson Correctional.  Whether or not he'll release a hot new album featuring T-Pain remains to be seen, but the important thing is that Kwame will get to meet a lot of the people he failed up-close and personal:  the kids who turned to crime because they had no education and the young men who did the same because they had no jobs.  Maybe while Kwame's in the joint they can all thank him, personally, for helping to make them the people they are today. 

So enjoy your new jumpsuit, Kwame.  It's not as warm or comfortable as the bespoke suits you love so well, nor will the warden monogram the cuffs, but maybe you'll get used to them - they sure look right on you.

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